Why a bamboo Trellis?
Short answer
It looks great, performs well, is light on the planet, and good for your garden!
For being just a nuisance grass in many American communities, bamboo sure is a lightweight, durable, and effective ally to have in the garden, particularly when you’re looking for a little support for growing plants, and bamboo can be found doing just that in greenhouses and gardens throughout the world. Plus a thriving bamboo grove is a huge producer of oxygen, a huge carbon sink, and doesn’t require herbicides or pesticides. A quality hand made trellis requires very little to go from plant to product, and when it reaches the end of it’s useful life as a trellis, the decaying bamboo enriches the soil. I doubt you’ll get that from the cheap plastic mold-injected trellis at your local big box.
Long answer
Though any bamboo trellis will offer loyal support to a plant for a season or two, ours not only function as plant support, ours are designed to add some natural beauty and harmony to the garden that is rare these days, and have been crafted by hand to outlast and out-perform similar products. Our sturdy and beautiful bamboo trellises are perfect for an award winning potted plant or orchid, or just to spruce up the back porch oasis! Here are our top 5 reasons to choose a Domestic Bamboo trellis to help support your plants.
provenance
With a DomesticBamboo trellis you’ll know right where your bamboo grew up… chemical free in southern Ohio, USA. Shoot, you can e-mail the guy who grew your bamboo, cut it down, cured it, heat treated it, fashioned it into a plant trellis, and tested it, before it shipped out. Try that with a cheap import!
Proven design
The fan shaped plant trellis is tried and true, as it allows for both vertical and horizontal growth and has a graceful structure to it that fits into most gardens. Our standard sized trellises are designed with the bottom stakes around 5 inches wide, fitting nicely in an 8, 10, 12 inch or bigger pot. The crown of each trellis spreads to around 17 inches, give or take an inch or so. The total height of the the trellis from the top to the stake points will be about 26 inches, so figure maybe 18-22 inches of above ground support. Additional horizontal bars are friction compressed for added dimensional support. This makes for a super solid trellis with just a wee bit of play in it, to settle into it's new home, ready to offer it's services for years to come. Over 80 plant trellis sold to happy homes! We also make a smaller simpler version.
Durability
Bamboo is susceptible to insect damage, as well as weather and UV degradation. Most commercial bamboo is either treated with boric acid or harsh chemicals in order to address insect damage. Here at Domestic Bamboo we use heat, in the form of various open flame artistic techniques to heat treat each piece, followed quickly by a warm burnish with our bamboo conditioner. This process sweats out the plants natural oils, which when burnished once they rise to the surface, harden into a protective enamel shell, which sheds moisture and inhibits UV penetration. The heat treatment provides another vital function, it reduces the moisture and starches which attract insect damage. Plus, a quality heat treatment brings out the natural beauty of bamboo, adds visual depth and contrast and gives our chimes trellises that one-of-a-kind look. We use plastic zip ties to hold it all together, partly because they are quick and easy, but mainly to extend the life of the product as our treated bamboo will outlast any organic ties we’ve tried by a sizable margin, so we make this compromise.
Additionally we are very careful about the pieces we use to build our trellises. Mass produced bamboo is cut to the desired size rapidly and without regard as to where those cuts are in relation to the nodes. Nodes are the thicker parts where you see rings, which correlate with a woody membrane inside that separates the otherwise hollow tubes into sections. These nodes are in large part, responsible for bamboo’s legendary strength, and by cutting them all willy-nilly, there are open tubes at the ends, which harbor insects and water rot, and become more prone to splitting. None of which is optimal for a trellis, so we take the extra time to find the bamboo pieces that want to be trellises, so we can cut the tops very close to the nodes and the bottom stake points also very close to the nodes. It takes more effort but the end result is a muck longer lasting trellis
Eco-friendly / garden friendly
Bamboo generates more oxygen and sequesters more carbon than trees, with the same plant being harvested every year, repeatedly, without the use of herbicides, pesticides, or chemicals of any sort. Climate-friendly sustainability on steroids. Bamboo is over 70% percent nature silica, the richest natural source on the planet, so as it decomposes it that silica strengthens and fortifies the soil and the plants living in it.
Unique Aesthetic
Sure you could buy mass produced plastic trellis’s made in china for pennies on the dollar, but why? Your garden is unique and beautiful, with a positive and grounding energy, a result of the time and effort spent helping your plants look their best. Our bamboo trellises work in harmony with those energies and understand the plant’s perspective, enhancing their natural beauty. Each trellis has been carefully curated and then heat-treated to produce the DomesticBamboo aesthetic, adding an earthy and pleasant visual texture to the background of your personal oasis!
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Don’t take our word for it…
Here’s just a few of the dozens of 5-star reviews for our trellises sold on Etsy:
“Beautifully made!! “ -Kathleen “I can't wait for my golden pothos to climb up it's new trellis. But in the meantime, I have some beautiful bamboo to look at!...” -Maureen “This trellis is great and is just like the seller describes. I managed to get 8+ feet of vines around it and it doesn't look too cramped at all. It's exactly what my hoya needed!!” – Alyssa “So pleased with the quality of this trellis, even better than expected. I'm confident that it's a durable item that was last a long time...” -Jayme “absolutely love this trellis. It is beautiful, well made and it is just what I wanted. I definitely recommend this trellis.” -Linda “his is awesome work. More like a work of art. I’m waiting on a special plant to use with it.” -Leasa “This is so cool and I can't wait to use it in my garden! I will be buying more!!” -Anna